CHAPTER I: ROME 1902

In the first volume of these memories I have described the
Rome which I knew as a boy of six, but little changed from the
city of Hans Andersen's improvisatore. It occupied only a portion
of the area surrounded by Aurelian's wall which enclosed a vast
acreage of gardens, parks, and fascinating regions abandoned to
ruin and solitude. Even on my second visit, not long after Rome
became the capital of United Italy, the Via Nazionale had not
been completed, while Santa Maria Maggiore and the Lateran Basilica
with their dependencies were islanded among vineyards and fields
of artichoke. By the time I joined the British Embassy in 1891,
the vacant spaces had to a great extent been laid out in streets,
but the speculative excesses of the building crisis, in which
many fortunes and some reputations were compromised, had left
a number of new constructions roofless. Others designed as pretentious
residences had been invaded by a class of tenant whose occupancy
only promised a pitiful return on the vast outlay of capital.

A great improvement was manifest when I rejoined the Embassy
at the end of January 1902. The city had spread beyond the gates
along the Nomentan road, and the "Castle meadows " behind
the fortress of St. Angelo and the new Law Courts had become a
residential quarter. The anticipation of a large influx of population
formed when the capital was transferred from the Arno to the Tiber
had been realized, and rents were rising rapidly. The wide streets
which had replaced the ilex avenues and fountains of the old Villa
Ludovisi had become the Roman Mayfair. The stately but sombre
palaces of the city of the Popes had been abandoned for the more
sanitary modern houses on the ridge from which the spurs of Quirinal,
Viminal, and Esquiline diverge. I had to march with the times,
and in order not to be too far from the Embassy at Porta Pia had
taken a large detached house, the Villino de Renzis, at a rental
which absorbed two-thirds of the modest salary which in those
days was considered adequate for a Counsellor of Embassy. There,
about a fortnight later, my wife joined me, bringing with her
a second daughter who had been born on the last day of the old
year.

The Ambassador, Lord Currie, had aged considerably during the
last two years. He had lost all his old vitality. There was none
of that confident assurance which had been characteristic in him
as an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office. His experiences abroad
had disappointed him. At Constantinople he did not receive the
support from home which he had anticipated, and when transferred
to Rome he seemed out of his proper element. It was no doubt difficult
for him, after thirty or forty years of official life in London,
to receive with patience himself the instructions which he had
so long been accustomed to dictate. With all the courtesies of
a great gentleman, he was too unplastic and essentially British
to appear sympathetic to the Italians, who did not appreciate
his official manner, and were at one moment anxious to bring about
his recall. An incident had accordingly been unduly magnified.
During one of the late Duke of Norfolk's periodical visits to
Rome, Lord Currie had, as an old friend, taken part in a reception
given by the former at his hotel, not fully realizing that this
party, chiefly attended by members of the Vatican hierarchy, had
a sort of semi-official character. The health of the Sovereign
Pontiff was reported to have been drunk at the buffet, and the
National Press commented with some warmth on the presence of an
Ambassador accredited to the Quirinal on such an occasion. Opposition
between the rival camps of Whites and Blacks was at that time
still pronounced, and could be exploited to serve a useful purpose.

It was perhaps not altogether unwelcome to the astute Lombard,
who then filled the post of Minister for Foreign Affairs, Signor,
afterwards Marchese, Prinetti, to have a grievance. We might thereby
be more readily disposed to meet him in a matter to which he attached
great importance, namely, the recognition of Italy's priority
of interest in the future of Tripoli, if and when occasion should
arise to assert it. At any rate Prinetti now secured gratuitously
an adhesion which we had shown some hesitation in giving. Italy
had obtained an acknowledgment of her reversionary interest in
Tripoli from the Governments of Austria-Hungary and Germany nearly
ten years earlier, when the Triple Alliance had been renewed by
Rudini. The French Government, whose goodwill in this matter was
exceptionally important, had just taken a somewhat similar engagement.
Not, however, without their quid pro quo, by which, so
far as Italy was concerned, a free hand was assured to France
in Morocco. Relations with France had remained cool and distant
ever since the fiery Sicilian, Crispi, had lost his temper with
the Latin sister, and had sought a more congenial partnership
in the Wilhelmstrasse at Berlin. Now, however, the situation had
somewhat changed.

We had, ourselves, been associated in the Mediterranean understanding
of 1887. But as time went on it became obvious that the statusquo then contemplated would not be indefinitely maintained,
and that such an understanding could only remain effective if
revised. When Germany and Austria-Hungary accepted the reversion
of Tripoli to Italy, we might have taken the opportunity of acting
graciously at the same time. But apparently no one had given a
second thought to the understanding of 1887. Some months later,
when I was in charge of the Embassy and had established relations
of intimacy with Prinetti, he observed to me that there had been,
for a long time, practically no diplomatic contact with a series
of British Ambassadors, mostly in failing health, who never discussed
political questions, and confined themselves to current work.
It was consequently assumed in Italy that we had lost interest
in her, or regarded her as a negligible quantity.

Meanwhile, time had modified the conditions which had antagonized
France and Italy. France had had an anticlerical phase, and the
possibility of intervention in favour of the Holy See no longer
gave preoccupation. Public sentiment in Italy had grown more reconciled
to the French Protectorate over Tunis, where Italian settlers
prospered. Crispi was dead, and the Triple Alliance was regarded
as the particular work of a statesman who had led the country
into a policy of adventure at that time beyond her powers. As
the trend of political opinion gravitated more and more towards
the left, the feeling became appreciable that the guarantees of
that Alliance were dearly bought at the price of the permanent
hostility of France and a pernicious tariff war. If Italy with
her peculiar capacity for compromise could combine the maintenance
of the Alliance with friendship for France her position in the
world would be vastly improved.

This apparently impossible consummation was to a great extent
accomplished, if at the cost of progressively increasing friction
between Italy and Austria-Hungary. The result was largely due
to the skilful management of my old friend, Barrère, during
the early period of his long tenure of the French Embassy. The
opportune moment for an exchange of views which might lead to
far-reaching results was indicated by the approaching date for
the periodical renewal of the Triple Alliance. Only many years
later did I appreciate the full significance of the negotiations
upon which he was engaged at this time or the precise terms of
a further understanding contracted simultaneously with the Morocco-Tripoli
agreement, and then I realized the debt which France owed to her
able representative.

Lord Currie became rather seriously ill in the spring, when
a disquieting weakness of the heart manifested itself. He was
incapable of any sustained effort, and thus, very soon after my
arrival, all the burden of current affairs fell on my shoulders.
a

He left Italy at the end of April. When his leave expired he
was granted a further period of sick leave. As his health did
not improve he finally retired in December. I thus remained in
charge of the Embassy from April 1902 until February of he following
year, a very unusual experience for a junior Counsellor.

Not many weeks after my arrival in Rome, I heard with genuine
sorrow of the death of my first chief in that capital, Lord Dufferin,
the kindest and most constant of older friends. His last years
had been clouded by misfortunes which must have weighed heavily
on his proud and sensitive nature. It was an irony of fate which
made one who gave such admirable advice to others so unlucky in
the management of his own affairs, and I bitterly resented that
such a Nemesis should have overtaken the brilliantly successful
life in which he did such good service to his country. A few weeks
later died Cecil Rhodes, whose extraordinary career also closed
under a shadow, for it was not until some two months later that
the South African War was brought to its close.

The brief reference to the diplomatic situation which I found
when I began my second period of residence at the Roman Embassy
may be completed by a sketch of the principal personalities with
whom I had to deal.

In the not very remarkable Government of Zanardelli the most
conspicuous figure was Prinetti, the Minister for Foreign Affairs,
who acted as a check on its tendency towards the left. A northerner
and a man of business as a manufacturer of bicycles on a large
scale, he continued to keep touch with the management of his firm
while concentrating an untiring energy on public affairs. He also
devoted much more time to social life than the majority of Italian
statesmen, who are seldom seen outside their offices and the Chamber.
He had to a great extent overcome an initial unpopularity due
to a dominant manner and a somewhat mordant tongue and, had not
overwork cut short a brilliant career in the full vigour of life,
he would no doubt have succeeded to the Premiership. His wife
was French, and her nationality was not without its influence
on the new orientation of foreign relations, in directing which
Prinetti was also endeavouring to promote closer relations with
Russia.

Among the parliamentarians the personality which at that time
impressed me most was that of Sidney Sonnino, with whom I was
afterwards to be so closely associated in the grave days of 1915.
He had already then, co-operating with the eminent economist,
Luigi Luzzatti, played a conspicuous part in restoring equilibrium
to the State finances. Thanks to their efforts the corner had
been turned in 1897-98. The gold premium had disappeared, and
a deficit, chronic for thirty-five years, had been converted into
a surplus. Sonnino's father, a Tuscan of Jewish antecedents, had
been established in Egypt, where he acquired a certain fortune
which made his son more than independent. His mother, on the other
hand, was Welsh, and she had brought Sidney up as a Protestant.
To her influence was due an austerity of character which increased
in later life and a scrupulous rectitude which was intolerant
of any dereliction from principle. He was very good-looking, and
combined a rather reserved manner with much personal charm. After
a few years in diplomacy he had been elected to the Chamber. If
he did not avowedly call himself a Conservative, a profession
of faith which hardly anyone in Italian public life then ventured
openly to assert, he was certainly one by conviction. He was universally
respected and tacitly admired, but generally regarded as irredeemably
rigid and uncompromising, with too many acute angles for comfortable
association in the political combinations of the group system
which had established itself. Men rather than principles commanded
a following in an assembly where there were too many heterogeneous
individualist elements for any Government to be long-lived.

The man already at that time singled out in my notes as most
likely to succeed in controlling the difficult machine was Giolitti.
His political career had suffered a temporary eclipse after the
Banca Romana scandals which he, as Minister of the Interior,
had been instrumental in bringing to light, a service which politically
recoiled on his own head. In one of the not uncommon intrigues
devised to break a Government Giolitti had lent himself to a scheme
for undermining the authority of Crispi. He had in his possession
a number of documents which he held back at the time of the revelations,
and it was insinuated that they contained matter incriminating
the veteran Sicilian statesman. There was, however, nothing in
the much-discussed Giolitti plico, which had not been within
the knowledge of the Committee appointed to investigate the affairs
of the bank. The constituencies pronounced a definite judgment
in favour of Crispi, and Giolitti's prospects seemed compromised.
Crispi had, however, been dead some years, and a genius for parliamentary
manipulation, which eventually became disastrous to the sincerity
of political life, had brought Giolitti's star once more into
the ascendant.

The diplomatic body has always played a conspicuous part in
the life of Rome, where much is expected of its members by the
horde of travellers who arrive from all countries. I have already
referred to Barrère, who became at a very early age French
Ambassador at Bern, and shall have more to say hereafter. The
doyen was the Austro-Hungarian representative, Baron Pasetti,
who like his wife was correctness itself in an protocolar formalities.
The Russian, M. de Nelidow, had been Lord Currie's colleague at
Constantinople, whence both of them were transferred to Rome about
the same time. The German Ambassador, Count Monts, was able and
genial, with a strong sense of humour which he did not always
diplomatically control. It was no doubt unfortunate that while
the tragedy of Belgrade was still a recent memory he should, at
a game of bridge, when his partner, the popular Serbian Minister
Milovanovich, inadvertently trumped his winning king, have addressed
him as le Régicide. The United States could have
sent no more acceptable a representative to the capital of nations
than George von Lengerke Meyer, who had charm as well as ability,
and a wife who at once became a general favourite. With us at
that time, however, those who filled the position of second-in-command
were more intimate than the heads of missions, and I had as colleagues,
with a similar status to my own, Herr von Jagow at the German
Embassy, M. Sazonow at the Russian Legation to the Holy See, and
at the Embassy M. Kroupensky, who was ambassador when the Great
War broke out. The naval and military attachés at our own
Embassy, Captain Mark Kerr and Colonel (now Sir Charles) Lamb,
a brother of Lady Currie, were also to be associated with Italy
during the war. The Rome of 1902 was thus full of elements who
were to be prominent in the stormy days of 1914-15.

The social world had changed considerably since I had served
there under Dufferin ten years earlier. But cosmopolitan gatherings
in hotel ball-rooms had not yet, as during my third and final
phase at the Embassy, replaced the old dignified traditions of
social life. A certain number of the great Roman houses still
maintained a decorous state, though many of their chiefs, including
even those who had rallied to the new order, lived their own lives
and took little part in public affairs. There were exceptions,
such as the witty an cultured Duke of Sermoneta, who had acted
as syndic of the city and, for a brief uncomfortable moment in
1896, had filled the post of Minister for Foreign Affairs. Palazzo
Doria, maintained as a model of what a Roman palace should be
by the refined taste of Alfonso Doria, was open to the friends
of a grand seigneur, whose tall and well-groomed figure was almost
as well known in Bond Street as in the Corso. His eldest sister,
the Duchess Massimo, with the conservative blood of an English
mother, was a living protest against social innovations The ancient
house of Colonna presented a typical example of the Italian genius
for compromise, for while the eldest of the three brothers by
whom it was represented filled by hereditary right the highest
civil function at the Papal Court, his daughter, the beautiful
Vittoria Colonna, whose marriage with the heir of the Liberal
family of Caetani seemed to close an ancestral feud dating back
to the days of Boniface VIII, had become a lady-in-waiting to
the Queen of Italy. The second brother, Don Fabrizio, had been
nominated to the Senate, while the third, Don Prospero, one of
the most popular figures in the capital, was later to become the
chief magistrate of the Roman municipality. On the other hand,
the front door of the Lancilotti Palace remained hermetically
sealed ever after the 20th of September, 1870, and the old Prince
was consistent in his recusancy to the new régime until
his death.

A few of the great Roman ladies, such as the Duchess Massimo,
the gracious Princess of Venosa, and the Marchesa Pallavicini,
still held their weekly receptions, and an after-glow of the old
stately life was then still perceptible. It has passed away now,
and it can never return. The exclusive noli me tangere of
the Roman aristocrat has been replaced by the less dignified tango
of the hotel ball-room, and banking counters occupy the remodelled
ground-floors of venerable palaces. I was recently discussing
with an old Roman friend reminiscences of our youth, and lamenting
the disappearance of much that linked us to an historic past.
" Aujourd'hui," I said," il n'y a plus
de salons à Rome." He assented, but added with
a sly French wit inherited from his mother, " Mais il
y a toujours des chambres à coucher."

Intellectual society found a meeting-ground in the apartment
in Palazzo Odescalchi of the historian, Count Pietro Desiderio
Pasolini, where the Countess, enthusiastic, intelligent, and moderately
rebellious to convention, assembled as her guests the most interesting
personalities in the world of politics, economics, and letters.
The Ravennese Senator, who displayed an impish pleasure in shocking
his audience and especially his wife, was one of the most attractive
types of those courteous and cultivated Italian noblemen of the
old school who, if they are less often seen in the capital, may
still be found taking care of their estates in many local centres.
There, or in the Palazzo Lovatelli, whose mistress, a sister of
the Duke of Sermoneta and mother of my old naval friend of East
African adventures [Vol. 1, chs. IX and X.], was one of the finest
classical scholars in Italy, you would be sure to find any foreign
literary celebrities who. were visiting the city. In her house
I once more renewed acquaintance with a familiar figure of the
old Berlin days, the veteran Mommsen. At the Pasolinis' I had
the pleasure of hearing the Roman poet, Pascarella, read to us
his vivid and suggestive poem on the Catacombs, and there I learned
to know one of the most sympathetic and picturesque personalities
of an older generation, Count Domenico Gnoli, then librarian-in-chief
of the Victor Emmanuel Library. He had had the singular experience
of making two different literary pseudonyms famous. In youthful
days the son of a high official at the Papal Court had had to
conceal his identity as a patriotic poet under the name of Dario
Gaddi. In later years, when he filled a distinguished position
in the world of art and letters, he had recourse to a similar
disguise. A poetess of no ordinary talent had fascinated his critical
sense and rejuvenated his spirit. To Vittoria Aganoor, the source
of inspiration, he presented a dedicatory volume which purported
to be the work of a young and unknown writer, Giulio Orsini, condemned
by physical infirmity to a hermit's isolation. It was not long
before every one was quoting the haunting verses of Giulio Orsini.
The end of Vittoria Aganoor led to one of the real romantic tragedies
of my experience. She had married the then Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Guido Pompfiji, and he, when
after a brief married life she died prematurely in the flower
of her fame, shot himself broken-hearted beside her death-bed
and was buried with her in the same grave. The secret of Giulio
Orsini was eventually revealed, and Gnoli continued to write under
that name until his death.

Another agreeable centre of discreetly intellectual society
was the hospitable apartment in Piazza Paganica of Donna Laura
Minghetti. She was, although she spoke no English, of British
origin, being an Acton of Naples, descended from the well-known
Prime Minister of the two Sicilies, Sir John Acton. Two distinguished
admirals bear the old British name in the Italian Navy to-day.
After the death of her first husband, Prince Camporeale, she had
surprised every one by marrying the veteran patriot and statesman,
Mareo Minghetti, Un Giorno di Scirocco, as she used to
say. Age did not alter nor could custom stale the infinite grace
of her winsome personality, and young and old alike acknowledged
the supremacy of her charm. Her daughter was married to Count
(afterwards Prince) Bülow.

The presence of distinguished French men of letters was always
announced to us by my friend, Count Giuseppe Primoli, who summoned
us to his quaint old house in Tor di Nona, now rebuilt on a much
more sumptuous scale. As the son of a Bonaparte Princess, he had
an almost dual nationality, and was as much at home in Paris as
in Rome. His quick and strongly seasoned but never unkindly wit
found readiest expression in his mother tongue. Is it given to
anyone to be witty in more than one language ?

At such gatherings you would be almost sure to find the illustrious
historian of the Church, Monseigneur Duchesne, Director of the
French Institute in Rome, which occupied the upper floor of the
Farnese Palace. In a long and wide experience I have seldom met
a more entertaining conversationalist than that eminent ecclesiastic
whose caustic humour might in any case have been an impediment
to his promotion to the highest dignities, even if he had not
sacrificed professional ambition to his devotion to historic truth.
His softer affections were bestowed upon a family of cats. One
of these, a special favourite, fell from a lofty window of the
Farnese palace and was killed. Duchesne was greatly upset, and
observed to a friend who expressed his sympathy, "It has
been a great blow to me. I could better have spared five cardinals."
Some of his excellent stories, unexceptionable when told de
vive voix , mightperhaps be less "convenient"
in print. His humour, however, which had a delicate spice of malice,
was spontaneous and topical, and would lose by an attempt to reproduce
it without the context. When certain conclusions in his ecclesiastical
history were discountenanced by the Vatican, he was bound like
Galileo to submit and withdraw them, or accept the consequences
of rebellion, but his acquiescence was no doubt qualified by a
mental reservation similar to that which escaped the great astronomer.
It was reported at the time that the question of transferring
his activities from Rome to Egypt was under consideration. When
asked whether there was any foundation for the rumour, Duchesne
replied that he thought it might prove to be correct; it would,
after all, be quite in traditional order: "Après
le Massacre des innocents la fuite en Egypte."

The troubles of our dear Monseigneur remind me of the curious
experience of Paul Sabatier, whom we met soon after our arrival
in Rome, on one of his periodical visits from Assisi, where he
was pursuing his Franciscan studies. He told me that on finishing
his classic work on St. Francis, he forwarded the two first published
copies which reached him to Cardinal Rampolla, in acknowledgment
of the kindness and assistance which he had received while making
researches in the Vatican archives. He had begged him if he thought
it suitable to offer one of these copies to Leo XIII. Sabatier
was not a little surprised and certainly gratified when he received
an official letter communicating to him the Apostolic blessing.
Unfortunately, a correspondent who saw the letter communicated
its substance to the Press. This afforded Luigi Luzzatti an opportunity
too good to miss of pointing out in an article that it seemed
hardly consistent with the doctrine of infallibility for the Pope
to have conferred the Apostolic benediction on a Protestant ;
and not long afterwards his book was placed on the Index. The
charm of Sabatier's company attracted us once more to Assisi,
to which I have been a constant and devout pilgrim. Umbria is
the paradise of Italy, and there is hardly a hill town in that
delightful province which my wife and I have not explored, following
up the work of those lesser masters, who painted for a simple
people with a naive and endearing realism which transferred the
scene of the Nativity or the Adoration to their own wide valley
of the Clitumnus and the pasture grounds of the oxen of Mevania.

It was our devotion to such studies that made our post such
a welcome one. My wife was at this time giving half of her day
to sculpture and reserving the other half for the social duties
which the absence of an ambassadress imposed upon her. To my regret,
after we left Rome on my promotion to be a Minister, the obligations
of official life compelled her to renounce an art for which she
had undoubted talent. My own judgment might be suspected of partiality,
but it is confirmed by the fact that the only two works which
she submitted were accepted for exhibition at the Academy.

There were then still in Rome a few survivals or descendants
of the old cosmopolitan society of art and letters. Old William
Story was dead, but his son Waldo still maintained the tradition
of plastic art in the studio in Via San Martino. The Americans
were indeed more conspicuous in this group than the British. Marion
Crawford came up from Sorrento to make studies for the historical
volumes which in later years he found more congenial than romance.
That curiously attractive pessimistic but kindly social philosopher,
Richard Brewster, who elected to write in French, as a more lucid
vehicle of expression, entertained a small and select circle of
friends in the Palazzo Antici Mattei.

America had indeed asserted itself in many directions in the
new Rome. The director of the American school, Benedict Carter,
who did so much for its extension and endowment, attracted large
audiences to archaeological and historical lectures, in which
he substituted a vivid modem incisiveness of exposition for the
old academic manner. A number of young and comely American brides
were unconsciously demonstrating that the pride which they took
in bearing ancestral titles was not inconsistent with a readiness
to defy the traditional conventions with which these had hitherto
been associated. They imported an entirely new and sometimes rather
hectic atmosphere to the ancient city, where they helped, though
probably not deliberately, to accelerate the disintegration of
the old order. It was one of the less agreeable experiences of
the American Ambassador to be occasionally invoked as an arbitrator
in their domestic differences, and it was then that George Meyer's
imperturbable calm and common-sense stood him in good stead.

I had occasion to observe this quality of his in a rather remarkable
experience. He was one of the pioneers of motoring in Central
Italy, and was one day driving my wife and myself over a little-frequented
road on the farther side of Lake Bracciano. We were slowly descending
a steep slope when, as we rounded a corner, we saw at the foot
of the hill a number of young horses in charge of three Butteri,
the centaurs of the Campagna, armed with their spear-like
ox-goads. Though Meyer at once stopped his car the whole cavalcade,
sighting an unknown monster, in a moment broke and galloped away
to right and left over the unfenced grass land. The three drovers
tried to hold in their own frightened horses, but only one succeeded.
The other two were carried away with the stampede. The third,
who was then barely a hundred yards distant, lowered his spear,
applied the spur and tried to charge the car. Meyer kept his head
and waited till the rider had covered half the space separating
him from us. Then he sounded his horn and the scared animal bolted
back. Three times did that indomitable horseman turn him and spur
him again to the charge, but each time a blast from the horn at
the critical moment was too much for his horse, and he had to
give it up and ride after his companions; whereupon we proceeded
on our way. It must, I fear, have taken them a long time to round
up their scattered troop. Meyer, who was not long afterwards transferred
to Russia, was later recalled to fill a high post in the administration
in his own country, where as his guest during the Roosevelt Presidency,
I renewed a sincere attachment which was only ended by his premature
death.

There was also a small and agreeable Russian colony in Rome.
Maurice Baring, who came as a welcome addition to our Embassy,
was devoting all his spare time to the study of Russian, and it
was through him that we made the acquaintance of one of the most
entertaining elderly ladies that it has been my good fortune to
meet, Princess Ourousow. She had been intimate with literary circles
in many countries, and had a keen critical sense and a rich store
of anecdote. Her description of her one and only interview with
Victor Hugo in his latter days was delightful, even though one
might suspect the portrait of being overdrawn. At the time when
she paid her visit with a letter of introduction, the old man
had long felt himself to be a sort of national institution, and
after years of adulation he had accepted himself as an oracle.
She found him sitting on a kind of throne, surrounded by a group
of' worshippers who waited for the word of wisdom. He motioned
her to a seat and after a while, looking into the infinite observed,
" Tout ce qui a été sera; tout ce qui sera
a été." When an appreciative audience had
had time to absorb this platitude he turned to Princess Ourousow
and inquired, as he understood her also to be a devotee of letters,
on what particular work she was then engaged. She replied that
at that time she was occupying herself with German literature.
"German literature ! " said Victor Hugo; " but
what is there to read in German?" "Surely," she
rejoined, "you will at least concede me Goethe ? " The
seer reflected; "LeGoethe, oui, oui, il a fait
quelque chose qui n'est pas mal, La Mort de Wallenstein."
When she broke in with, "Pardon, maître,
vous voulez dire Schiller, n'est-ce pas ? " he disposed
of her interruption with, "Goethe, Schiller---Schiller,
Goethe, c'est la même chose!" Then with a flash
of inspiration he continued: " Non, Madame, croyez-moi,
il n'y a eu que trois, l'Homère, le Dante et le Shakespeare"

and, tapping his forehead with a gesture which seemed to

imply that all three had combined to produce a fourth, he added,
"Jeles ai tous ici." The conversation
closed with a reaffirmation of the oracular statement, "Tout
ce qui a été sera; tout ce qui sera a été,"

A constancy, interrupted only by official infidelities, to
my first love, poetry, has always made me happy to have been associated,
during my term in charge of the Roman Embassy, with the inception
of the scheme for acquiring the house where Keats died, and there
inaugurating a Museum and Library dedicated to the memory of the
two great English poets, whose graves lie under the Aurelian wall
in the cemetery near the gate of San Paolo.

The project was first conceived by Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson,
who at that time edited the Century Magazine. He spent
a spring in Rome, to which he was eventually to return many years
later for a brief period as American Ambassador. He and his fellow-countryman,
my old friend, Henry Nelson Gay, whose studies in the Risorgimento
had led him to adopt Rome as his residence, suggested to me that
we should convene a small meeting of British and Americans who
might be in sympathy with such a scheme, to which it appeared
the more urgent to give early effect, as the incorporation of
the house in an hotel was reported to be contemplated.

It happened that year that our poet-laureate, Mr. Alfred Austin,
was residing at Albano, only a few miles from the city, and I
naturally at once approached him and invited him to be present.
To my amazement he excused himself from coming, and wrote that,
in his opinion, a disproportionate amount of attention had been
devoted to Keats and Shelley. "For my part," he added,
" I must remain with Shakespeare and with Milton," and
there under the circumstances I had to leave him. Johnson, Nelson
Gay, Miss Agnes Repplier and one or two more represented American
letters. Mrs. Edith Wharton was unable to be present, but gave
the scheme her blessing. I myself, without other support, undertook
to promote the cause in Great Britain. Committees were organized
in the two countries to raise the necessary funds. The property
had been mortgaged up to its ultimate capacity, and there were
a number of parties interested in the settlement. But, thanks
largely to the zeal and perseverance of Nelson Gay, all the practical
difficulties were in time surmounted. The golden-coloured house
at the foot of the stairway leading to the Trinity of the Hills,
with a library of seven thousand volumes, and relics deposited
there by Arthur Severn, Mrs. Call, and other benefactors, is now
securely held by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, and is
visited annually by many hundreds of pilgrims.

In the glorious May weather my wife and I, with Maurice Baring
and Stephen Leach, made an expedition, which a happy accident
rendered memorable, to the ruins of the abandoned medieval stronghold
of Ninfa in the Pontine marshes. Since the introduction of the
motor-car, Ninfa, which lies some forty miles south of Rome. has
become more accessible. In those days the lonely site was known
only to a few, and the tradition of pernicious malaria, which
had led to its abandonment in the sixteenth or seventeenth century,
scared the traveller from the ill-famed marshlands, not then redeemed
by an extensive system of drainage canals. The walled town commanded
the line of the Appian highway to the south, from the higher edge
of the swampy plain which extends to the Tuscan sea from the base
of the sheer Volscian mountains, where Norma and the Cyclopean
remains of Norba cut the skyline. We had arranged to drive from
Velletri, and as a subsidiary railway line from Terracina to Rome
passed within easy reach of the ruins we sent the carriage back,
proposing to return in the evening by the later of the two daily
trains.

The fortress, which has belonged to the Caetani family ever
since it was acquired simultaneously with Norma and Sermoneta
by Peter, the nephew of Boniface VIII, at the end of the thirteenth
century, stands on the edge of a rush-bordered lake fed by springs
rising at the foot of the mountains. A little crystal-clear river,
the Nymphaeus, which gave Ninfa its name, issues from the lake
and bisects the town, running under two broken bridges both within
the circuit of the many-towered walls. The irregular streets were
in those days choked with brier and thistle. The roofless churches
still bore traces of frescoed saints dimly outlined over altars
in chapels invaded by wild jasmine and red valerian, and festooned
with climbing honeysuckle. Between the lake and the hills masses
of broom were golden in full flower, and seaward all the plain
was scarlet with a riot of poppies. Landwards the long line of
the Volscians ran south, past Sermoneta on the lower slopes to
where the marshland was bounded by the heights of Anxur and the
bold outline of Circe's hill projecting into the sea. Only the
song of mid-May's nightingales broke the silence of beautiful
desolation half-veiled in the ivy of centuries.

We spent a long afternoon exploring the ruined churches and
courts whose gates were barred by the wild growth of nature. Then
reluctantly, as the declining day intensified the purple shadows
and gilded the broken towers, we turned our backs on the silent
city and started for the little station where we were to join
the train from Terracina. But we had not reckoned with a change
in the time-table made on the 15th of the month ; and in the distance
we saw the train on which we had counted steam in and stop and
start again. And so as the sun went down in the Tuscan sea and
mists began to draw up from the plain we were left shelterless
in the Pontine fen. The only alternatives before us were to scale
the steep cliff to Norma, where there was little prospect of securing
any accommodation for the night, or to turn northwards and walk
nine miles by an ascending stony path to Cori, where we were told
by a herdsman of buffalo, sallow and drawn with fever, that we
should find a modest inn.

We chose Cori, and set out as the brief twilight began to darken.
Among the bushes bordering our rocky road innumerable fire-flies
flashed their tiny lamps. The nightingales, silent for a moment
after the sun had gone under, burst into song once more, first
one and then another and another, till the air, heavy with the
perfume of the broom, vibrated with their chorus. Then to crown
it all the moon rose full and brilliant, and we no longer needed
the distant lights of Cori on its hill to guide us. Not for a
moment did we regret the train that had left us in the wilderness.
No one spoke. The magic of that spring night was beyond the power
of words to express, and after twenty years its unforgotten beauty
haunts me still.

That May, the Italian Court received a visit from the reigning
Shah of Persia. The visits of Shahs had ceased to be like those
of the angels, but they still gave some preoccupation to the hosts.
The first European tour of a Persian autocrat which I can remember
had occurred some twenty years earlier. Dufferin, who was then
our Ambassador in St. Petersburg, told me a pleasing story of
an episode at a Court reception there when the Shah, who was escorted
into the cercle by the Emperor, cast a wondering eye over
an assembly which, in the great days of the Winter Palace, presented
one of the most brilliant pageants in Europe. The Grande Maîtresse
was a lady no longer young, of massive proportions, with an
ample bust and shoulders. The Shah, advancing towards her with
an extended forefinger which pointed to the décolletage,
turned to his host and smilingly observed: " Vieille,
laide. Pourquoi nue ? "

In the potentate, who on this occasion paid a visit to Rome,
a naturally nervous temperament had been accentuated by an attempt
on his life. The normal railway service was thrown out of gear
by his demand that the speed of no train in which he travelled
should exceed twenty-five miles an hour. To ensure that his nights
should be free from care, he had a guard lying across each doorway
into his bedroom, and another at the foot of the bed. The ancient
and the medieval city did not arouse any enthusiasm in his strangely
impassive temperament. I once crossed the Atlantic with a music-hall
artist, who was described in the advertisements as "the man
who made the Shah laugh." His success in diverting the melancholy
monarch was, it seems, due to his entry on the stage as waiter
carrying a high pile of plates, which fell with a crash and broke
as he tripped over a carpet. A military parade, organized in the
Shah's honour, left him quite unmoved until the moment came for
an observation balloon attached to a lorry to make its ascent.
He expressed a desire to acquire a similar one, and suggested
when the balloon descended that his Minister of Public Works should
there and then go up in it to be instructed in its management.
The natural pallor of that distinguished official became cerulean,
but the Shah insisted on his entering the car. It was, however,
tactfully explained that this balloon was intended to carry one
passenger only, and that with two it could only rise a few metres.
The Minister's nerves were therefore not put to too high a test.

At the dinner party given in his honour at the Quirinal, I
had on my right an eminent Chinese dignitary who was visiting
Europe on a special mission. His clothes were beautiful, but his
expression rather fierce and truculent. I; however, smiled benignantly,
and was about to try all the languages with which I am more or
less familiar in an opening for conversation when he sternly pronounced
a sentence no doubt acquired for such occasions. "No speakie
English. No speakie anything." After that, I at any rate
knew how we stood, and devoted all my conversational charm to
my neighbour on the left.

It had been contemplated that the Shah should pay a visit to
the Sovereign Pontiff, and he had proposed to proceed to the Vatican
from the Persian Legation. Such a course was, however, not acceptable
to the ecclesiastical authorities, who Insisted that he must set
out from one of the Missions accredited to the Holy See. To this,
however, the Shah demurred, and under the circumstances he decided
not to go at all, a decision which gave great satisfaction to
certain sections of the Press, which acclaimed him as a monarch
of liberal ideas.

In the same month the renewal of the Triple Alliance was announced
by Prinetti in the Chamber, and on the 31st the Boers definitely
accepted the terms of surrender. This happy consummation was regarded
as a matter for congratulation in Italy. In Germany the comments
made displayed a prudent reserve, which suggested disappointment.
Certainly no other state had so zealously and consistently encouraged
the idea of autonomy in the Transvaal.

We had taken for the summer a villa at Vallombrosa, which stood
isolated on the edge of the forest a mile or more from the monastery
and the hotels. It was still chilly when we arrived in June at
an altitude of 3,000 feet. After settling my family there I returned
to Rome within a week, and there to my consternation received
a telegram announcing that it had been necessary to defer the
coronation, and that two days before the date fixed for the ceremony
King Edward had had to undergo a very serious operation. The news
created a profound impression in Italy, and the Embassy was besieged
with callers. Circumstances had, over a number of years, brought
me into intimate relations with a Prince who had given me many
marks of his confidence before he became my sovereign, and I was
deeply concerned at the heavy blow which had fallen on the King,
who, surrounded by delegations from all the ends of the earth,
had with indomitable pluck continued in full activity up to the
last moment. Happily the news reported in a succession of telegrams
was favourable, and I returned to our forest abode which it was
possible to reach under the most favourable conditions in some
five hours by trains corresponding with a funicular mountain railway.

From one of my periodical visits to Rome I was summoned back
by telegraph owing to the serious illness of our Italian cook,
an old friend who had been with us since our marriage. I took
the first available train, but the funicular railway did not run
after sunset, and a long uphill drive through the mountains from
a station which I only reached at nightfall was inevitable. About
10.30 p.m. on a dark night, at the worst point in the road which
skirted a precipice without rail or wall, the horse stumbled and
fell obliquely to the road. As I jumped out to go to his head,
he tried to rise by himself, and in his struggle went over the
edge, dragging carriage and driver after him down a sheer depth,
as I imagined, of hundreds of feet. We were far from any human
habitation, and I felt a shiver of apprehension. Then a voice
from the darkness reassured me. The driver at least was not killed.
Nor, indeed, was he hurt. There was a ledge some feet below with
trees which had held the carriage jammed. The horse, he told me,
was lying there tied up in the harness. It was, however, dangerous
to move in the darkness, and Gennaro clung to his tree while I
went back along the road to look for assistance. After running
for about a mile, I found some houses and roused the sleeping
occupants. Eight men with ropes and lanterns' returned with me,
and in due course the horse, a good deal cut about the head but
not otherwise seriously injured, was extricated from the wreckage.
I then went on alone on foot. In a village some miles farther
on, I roused a man who had a horse and trap, and was thus enabled
to reach our house soon after daybreak.

My unfortunate retainer did not live many days. He had made
up his mind to die, and was perfectly tranquil when he had received
my assurance that his body should be sent back for burial to his
home in the Abruzzi. The process of embalming for transportation,
which was carried out in the open air in a neighbouring cypress-sheltered
cemetery, and the removal of the coffin from our isolated summer
residence to the distant Abruzzi mountains, was no easy matter.
But with the assistance of his brothers it was accomplished. The
homing instinct of the dying seems to be a general characteristic
of simple humanity. He had left in his will a sum of six thousand
lire to be devoted to his funeral and monument.

During the summer, which for us passed quietly in the beautiful
forest world of Vallombrosa, many things happened.. King Edward
had made so good a recovery that the date of his coronation was
fixed for the 9th of August. It was not possible to celebrate
the occasion in Rome, as no one was left there, and even the Foreign
Minister was taking a holiday before accompanying the King of
Italy to Berlin. His Majesty had also paid a visit to Russia.
Lord Salisbury, whose retirement had been anticipated on the conclusion
of the South African War, had resigned, and was succeeded by Mr.
Balfour, to the satisfaction of the French Press, which had displayed
anxiety lest the reversion should fall to Chamberlain. The great
tower of St. Mark's at Venice had subsided and become a huge mass
of debris, covering its base in the piazza.

At the beginning of September we went to Viterbo, the city
where the Popes of the Middle Ages had so often taken refuge,
when factions in Rome were at enmity with the ecclesiastical power,
in order to see the annual Festa, the Macchina of Santa
Rosa. The saint has my devout gratitude for having inspired so
picturesque a celebration. But as according to the story she began
to be precociously devout at about the age of six, and even in
those early days was persistent in putting every one else right,
she must have been a little trying in her own family. Every year,
as her day in the calendar approaches, an ornate baroque lath
and plaster tower of great height and elaborate design is constructed
in an open space beside the Roman Gate, to which the street ascends
at a steep gradient. Seventy-two Viterbans are selected from among
the worthiest citizens to carry this lofty erection on their shoulders
after nightfall down the hill from the Roman Gate to the central
piazza and then uphill on the farther side to the church of the
saint. They are divided into two groups of thirty-six according
to their stature. On the downhill road the tall men are in front.
In the piazza the tower is deposited on trestles, and for the
uphill portage the order is reversed, the taller men going to
the rear. It is steadied by guy-ropes held by other members of
the company , and its windows are brilliant with innumerable candles.
In the top story sits a man in charge. The municipal band plays
at the head of the procession. The illuminated tower overtops
the houses and irradiates the picturesque town. In front of the
church the bearers spin round with the Macchina on their
shoulders, and the Viterbans feel reassured that all will be well
with them in the coming year. Summer in Italy. is rich in such
local celebrations. The Palio at Siena, the Ceri at
Gubbio, and a number of lesser festivals date back far into the
past, and some of them, such as the Ceri and the Santissima
Trinita in the Sabines, are possibly survivals of prehistoric
times. Viterbo, lying under the Ciminian hills, with its interesting
churches, Cosmatesque monuments, and its unique twelfth-century
houses, is one of the most characteristic towns in central Italy.
Motor-cars have now rendered it very accessible.

In October Kitchener paid me a brief visit. He was in his element
exploring the Forum and Palatine with Boni, and he thoroughly
enjoyed himself. I was rather surprised to hear him express the
opinion that though the Boers had shown themselves to be good
fighters, they had been badly led. Their generals, he explained,
did not work together. Had de Wet when he entered Cape Colony
been supported by other simultaneous movements, things might have
been made very difficult for us. Boer farmers who were called
out for a three weeks' raid obeyed the summons without hesitation,
but they could not be induced to remain out for a day beyond the
prescribed date, and took their departure as soon as their time
was up. For Milner he had a high regard and a great personal admiration.
He did not nevertheless consider that his presence at the Cape
would promote reconciliation, because, quite unjustly, the Boers
could not "get it out of their wooden heads" that he
had brought on the war. As for the War Office, over which he could
hardly then have foreseen he would one day be called to preside,
he observed that only by digging up its foundations and beginning
again from the bottom could that fossil institution ever be improved.

We had at this time a serious reverse in Somaliland, where
the Mad Mullah was becoming formidable. Perhaps we had placed
too much confidence in native levies. The Somali is a first-rate
shikari, but my African education under Lloyd Mathews had been
never to trust him in war or business. It was necessary now to
take drastic measures. The enormous sum spent in that Somali war
was quite disproportionate to the real value of a very barren
land. Had the advice which Wingate and I had pressed in 1897 been
adopted, and an inexpensive light railway been constructed into
the interior, we might have been spared this great expenditure.
The Italians were naturally anxious that the Mullah. should not
be driven into the hinterland of their Benadir Colony, towards
the Webbe Shebeli. After a little conference at Rome, which was
attended on behalf of the Foreign Office by Eyre Crowe, we succeeded
in obtaining authority to land a British force at Obbia, in the
Italian Protectorate.

Prinetti, who had been very helpful, now suggested that Italy
should be associated with ourselves and with Germany in coercive
action against Venezuela, where Italian claims had met with as
little regard as our own. The proposal was favourably received,
but the idea of united action with Germany was very unpopular
at home. John Bull is slow to anger and little disposed to suspect
the motives of others. But a long series of ungracious actions
on the part of the German Government and finally their attitude
during the South African War had aroused a resentment which had
not been mollified by certain recent manifestations of goodwill
on the part of the. Emperor. Statesmen were perhaps justified
in hoping that an occasion for terminating the growing spirit
of animosity might be found in a common interest. But the average
man was more concerned not to compromise our relations with the
United States.

Owing to Lord Currie's illness I had to forgo my leave. When
at the end of the year he resigned, the King of Italy took an
opportunity to say to me that he hoped I might be left at his
Embassy. The significance of his friendly words was explained
when Prinetti told me that he had instructed the Italian Ambassador
in London to express the wish that I might be appointed to succeed
Lord Currie. Gratifying as was this evidence of goodwill, I knew
that such a proposition was out of the question, and being myself
quite innocent in the matter, I could only trust that I should
not be regarded as a desperate intriguer.